Top U.S. Air Defense Commander: Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet “Had to Be PRE-PLANNED”

Zero Hedge ^ | 27 Nov 2015 | George Washington

[amorphous]

In his role as Norad commander for Alaska, McInerney dealt with more Russian fighter jet incursions (which he calls "bear penetrations") than anyone else in the world.

So McInerney knows how to tell innocent from hostile incursions by foreign fighter jets, standard rules of engagement of foreign fighter jets, how to read radar tracks, and the other things he would need to know to form an informed opinion about the shootdown of a foreign jet.

Yesterday, McInerney told Fox News - much to the surprise of the reporter interviewing him - that assuming the Turkish version of the flight path of the Russian jet is accurate, Russia wasn't threatening Turkey, and that Turkey's shoot down of the Russian jet "had to be pre-planned", as the jet wasn't in Turkish air space long enough for anything other than a premeditated attack to have brought it down:

[USNBandit]

I never said that.

What I have said is that it isn't in our interests to have a shooting conflict with Russia. The Turks have given the Russians an excuse to start trying to flex their muscle and block our access to Syrian airspace. That means our aircraft at Incirlik will be benched. The Russians will continue to bomb, but only the groups that are attacking Assad's forces.